Remember
back in the early golden days of the movies when a gang of neighborhood kids
would be playing in someone’s back yard and one kid (such as Judy Garland or
Mickey Rooney) would get a brilliant idea and shout, “Hey, kids, let’s
put on a show!” These productions were always scatterbrained and silly yet
everyone had a grand time and in the movies back then everyone always lived
happily ever after.
Well, once upon a time there was an
awe-inspiring author who wrote charming stories about a guy in Seattle and a clowder
of cats and kittens who were world famous on the Internet. A number of the fans of these cats and
kittens and these charming stories wished that there could be a real honest-to-goodness
book, printed on real paper in the time-honored fashion, a book you could hold
in your hands so the stories could be read again and again (even if there was a
power failure).
There was a shout, “Hey, kids, let’s make a book!” The magic wand was waved, the incantation was recited, and voilà—“Sing to the Moon” by Jill Pickford popped
into existence!
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| It was like magic! |
But perhaps I exaggerate a tad. It may
not have been
quite as simple as that.
Let’s
go back in time and tell this story from its beginning. Jill Pickford began watching Foster Dad John’s
Critter Room on Livestream with Rosemary’s Spice Kittens in the Fall of
2012. Several litters later, by the
Spring of 2013, while watching Kari’s Mythbuster litter, her first story was
born. She shared this with FDJ’s Critter
Room Facebook page and everyone who read it loved it. The fandom began.
More
stories came along now and again—Jill was carefully developing and slowly unveiling a complete
mythos, with a cast of characters (feline and human) spanning recorded history,
the cosmos, and kittens on the Internet.
It was a mesmerizing world, causing readers to both laugh and weep
(ofttimes both at once).
By
November of 2015, The Critter Room was celebrating its Golden Jubilee—and John
had raised and nurtured well over 200 cats and kittens in The Critter Room. Through
his sponsoring shelter (Purrfect Pals in Arlington, Washington) most of them had
been adopted into wonderful forever homes and a majority of the ones who had
been on the Kitten Cam had their own Facebook pages. Many more delightful
stories followed from Jill's fruitful imagination. The richly embroidered fantasy world she envisioned
slowly expanded and coalesced into a continuing story line, taking place on
both the earthly plane and in the spiritual realm on the other side of the
Rainbow Bridge.
In
addition to FDJ’s cats and kittens finding perfect forever homes, and these heart-warming
stories being written, another unexpected phenomenon was unfolding. A wondrous group of people from all over the
world were getting to know each other, first through their computers and phones
and tablets, and then many met in person at a series of yearly Kitten Cam Cons,
taking place initially in Seattle, then several European conventions—and
next, who knows? Kitten Cammers will
take over the world!
But
back to our timeline: February of 2016—enter Nancy, one of Jill’s most
ardent fans, who wrote her the following
message on Facebook: “I am sure you have
been asked, but is there ever a chance that you will compile all your fantastic
writings into a book that could be printed and sold to benefit Purrfect
Pals? #patientlywaitingfirstinline"
Jill
responded, “If anyone cares to show me how… :) ”
Enter
Susan, another fan of Jill’s, who responded, “You may be sorry you asked that
question ;) ”
This exchange resulted in the setting up of a
small and private Facebook group for a handful of us to explore the
possibilities of bringing Jill’s book into fruition. As I had had some experience being a “content
and continuity” editor for an author friend, I volunteered my services as editor. I also said I had some ideas for a
cover. Susan, as a multi-talented and accomplished
author in several fields (Susan's website, Be As One), volunteered to do the formatting
and layout and publishing stuff. Here is the link to her book inspired by Foster Dad John’s kittens and cats: The Critter Room Memory Book. Nancy
cheered us on with wise observations, gentle urging, and barely contained
excitement.
With fewer than a half a dozen active members
in our Facebook group, it is astonishing
how many posts we generated in a year’s time.
We discussed every single facet of the book-to-be, from Oxford commas to
em dashes and ellipses, when to capitalize Moon, the whole babbies versus babies
discussion and the stirring ‘dopshun
versus dopshun debate—not a single word or a punctuation mark
escaped our fierce scrutiny. An early
decision was to keep Jill’s British spelling but change the punctuation to
American (with one tiny exception).
“Hey!
We ought to find people to illustrate the stories!” “What a great idea! There are loads of
Critter Room fans that have created amazing artwork.” After putting the word out, we were disappointed
to receive only a lukewarm response. But
hey, it was understandable, folks were busy: working for a living, studying for
degrees, raising children—you know—life got in the way.
I began
working on the cover, starting with some full moon photos I had shot. For six months or more I spent the nights of every
full moon out in my driveway with my cumbersome Nikon D80 and my dad’s rickety old
tripod (stabilized with an rusty antique flat iron hanging from a bungee cord),
trying to achieve the perfect photograph that matched my vision. At times my moon shot seemed almost within
reach, but I just could not get it the way I saw it in my head. Mother Nature kept raining on me, beclouding my
sky, or blowing wind at my trees and by the end of the night the muscles in my
neck would be twitching and my eyes would be crossed from trying to peer into
the viewfinder (I have grown way too accustomed to LCD screens on my newer my
little point and shoot cameras).
With only
a few semi-suitable shots in my computer I began laying out the cover. I envisioned a cat face within the moon. The first cat image I found was Suzanne Hoag's painting of Alice
(Hitchhiker Mom) who looked to me like she was singing. Alas, it was decided she looked too scary, as
if she were growling. Back to searching
through FDJ’s Critter Room alumnae photos.
No luck.
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| Alice by Suzanne Hoag, painted for FDJ's Jubilee in 2016 |
Enter
Mister Ripley. We had earlier convinced
him to write a foreword for Jill’s book and on Ripley’s Facebook page he posted
a great shot of her that would be perfect for the cover. He was kind enough to send me a hi-res
file. I cut it out in Photoshop and
placed it into the moon—but to my dismay, no matter what I did
with it, it just did not work. But I
continued to tinker with the layout and if nothing else, I found a perfect font
for the title. How can a book of cat
stories miss with a font called Cataneo?
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| The one and only Ripley, photo courtesy of Mister Ripley (James Petts) |
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| Alice on the left, Ripley on the right, Super Moon on the bottom |
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| Various attempts at the cover |
In the
meantime, Jill had created several appliqued and embroidered covers for throw
pillows with a variety of cat and moon designs.
She packed them up and mailed them to Purrfect Pals for their Black Cat
Ball auction in the Fall of 2016. The
only photos she had taken were not book-cover reproduction quality, so I tried
my darndest to reach the liaison from Purrfect Pals who had been the recipient
of the package so she could take a good photo our chosen design. Unfortunately, by the time she received my
frantic message, the pillow covers had already been stuffed, sewn up and
plumped, so thus trying to take a good photo was pretty much out of the question
and the auction was on and the pillows were sold and gone.
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| Jill's original applique pillow cover design |
Jill
responded by sitting down with a sheet of paper, some markers, and a large
plate (to trace around for the moon), and re-created the pillow design. It was then that she also shyly admitted that
she had been doing some simple illustrations for her stories. When she shared them with us we were blown
away—our
author has been twice blessed to be not only a talented writer but a whimsical artist
as well. Her drawings were absolutely
perfect for her stories and it was an easy project for me to turn her marker
drawing into a striking cover.
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| Ta da! The finished cover! |
As soon as the cover design was solidified, Susan leapt into action and designed a postcard with "how to buy this book" information that could be used for publicity.
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| Front of the postcard (and poster) |
By the
time the holidays were over and we were into 2017, real editing began in
earnest. Emails, messages, and Facebook posts
flew back and forth around the world, discussing and debating every single question
about encountered grammatical quandaries, spelling conundrums, or
punctuation dilemmas. Continuity was our main
concern; as Jill had written these stories and poems over a span of several
years, it never occurred to her that folks would be sitting down to devour all
of them together in book form. They had
to be perfect.
When it
was as perfect as it could be in this first go-round, I sent the Word doc off
to Susan (who had been ever so politely hinting that we had better get a move
on) for formatting. Susan began working
with Word in Create Space and transformed our document into a PDF, carefully
setting up margins, gutters, and making sure there were no dreaded widows or
orphans or unwanted hyphens. It even had
a Table of Contents! It looked so
impressive (especially with the addition of Jill’s illustrations). It was starting to look like a real book!
We
read through this PDF, each finding a few more spelling questions or typos or
missing or misplaced punctuation marks.
Back and forth the document went to Susan, who most skillfully fine-tuned
and massaged the manuscript into shape. With
each incarnation the number of notated mistakes lessened until finally there
were none (we hoped!).
Yet
another decision had to be made. We
needed to come up with a name that Jill could use for her publishing house; several
names were suggested and after chewing on it for a while we chose Great Circle
Productions (once you have read the stories this will make sense to you).
The
next step was to have proof copies printed up (paid for by our financier Nancy who was, by
this time, shall we say, completely over
the moon and quivering with anticipation) so we could each go through with
our red pencils for one final look-see.
And yes, we each found more errors—but Susan set about making
repairs with her usual serene determination and soon “Sing to the Moon” by Jill
Pickford was all finished. Had it really
been over a year since Nancy first expressed her wistful wish?
In the
midst of all of our editing struggles, another kid in our gang, after patiently
standing in the wings for months (she was getting tired!), stepped into her
long-awaited role in the publicity and merchandising department. Enter Joan, proprietor of the Club
Chickenfish Store on Café Press, and she took our designs and ran with them to create
T-shirts and mugs (or any of their offerings from their vast array of available
merchandise) with the book cover or Great Circle Productions logo and one of
Jill’s drawings from the book. Joan also
had the large publicity posters (of the postcard front) printed and mounted which will eventually make
their way to Purrfect Pals’ headquarters.
Here is the link to Club Chickenfish where you will find all Critter
Room and kitten cam related merchandise, all sold to the benefit of Purrfect
Pals.
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| Logo or book cover on front of shirts and mugs, ETKHAND logo on backs |
Joan
and Nancy will be staffing the Sing to the Moon booth at Purrfect Pal’s annual
Average Joe Cat Show on May 6th 2017 at Shoreline's Spartan Recreation Center. Between the two of them they have gone to
great lengths to color-coordinate every detail in the display from the large
posters to plush kitties, cat pens, and a kitty/moon designed fabric for a table runner. They will be talking up the book, showing the few precious copies in existence (these will be tied to the table!)
and handing out Susan's lovely postcards with all of the info on how to order your very own copy of
this marvelous little book. (Keep the
postcard—it will make a great bookmark for your copy of “Sing to the Moon”!) And if your timing is right, you may have the
honor of meeting Foster Dad John or Mister Ripley in person!
We have
set up a Facebook Group with all of the information about the book, where to
buy it and with an album of adorable photographs of many of the cast of
characters from the book. You will also
find a glossary in case the British words prove puzzling, and on this page you
can ask questions of Jill and she promises to answer in a timely fashion. Here is the direct link to the Facebook
page: Sing to the Moon
Before
the book, Jill had been publishing her stories on her own blog called
KittenKamKattery. This will be the place to go to read older stories and find new ones, as she writes them.
For those not on Facebook, the link to the Create Space page to purchase your very own copy of this book is Create Space Sing to the Moon book. After you buy it and read it and enjoy the heck out of it we would also be very
pleased indeed if you could pop over to Amazon and leave a review. Amazon Sing to the Moon book (Be sure to buy it from the Create Space
link, however, because they give a much larger portion of the proceeds to
Purrfect Pals than does Amazon.)
So that
is the backstory of how a great guy and a clowder of cats and kittens in
Seattle inspired a writer in Colchester, UK, and a small team of dedicated “fan
gals” from all over the USA (from Washington State to Worcester, Mass and
Tucson, Arizona with Buffalo in the middle) were able to gather in cyber space to
produce this little book without ever setting foot together the same room. Wishes can come true.
And now,
to paraphrase the inimitable Mehitabel the cat, I’ll end with our favorite motto: “Enjoy the kittens, have a nice day.”
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| ETKHAND, drawing by Jill Pickford |
